Has Mehbooba Mufti imposed Emergency in Kashmir?

As if snapping cell phone and mobile internet services in curfew-bound Kashmir - leaving seven-million odd people devoid of any communication with the outside world - were not enough, the J&K government has now gone for a media gag.

In a midnight crackdown on print media in the Valley, the Jammu and Kashmir Police on July 16 raided various printing facilities to seize copies of leading newspapers like Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir, Kashmir Observer and Kashmir Reader.

Greater Kashmir reported on its news portal that apart from seizing its print plates and 50,000 copies of its sister concern Kashmir Uzma, an Urdu daily, the police arrested three of the printing press staffers last night. The press was subsequently sealed.

Prominent journalist and Rising Kashmir editor-in-chief, Syed Shujaat Bukhari said their driver was chased by the police, the newspaper copies seized, and their vehicle taken to the police station.

Has chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, often described as "Iron Lady" by her admirers in People's Democratic Party, declared a state of Emergency in the Valley, if not a civil war with the Kashmiri people?

Well, constitutionally speaking, a gag on media is subject to declaration of Emergency. But Kashmir is a different story.

As the Valley continues to be on the boil with death of at least 40 persons in nine consecutive days, doctors treating the wounded in Srinagar hospitals say they have never witnessed such an enormous humanitarian crisis. 

Not even in the 1990s when militancy was at its peak, because never before were more than 3,000 casualities reported within a week in the conflict zone.

Daily Kashmir Observer editor-in-chief Sajjad Haider said, "Despite being under tremendous strain, local newspapers were filling the information void created by the absence of an alternate media in Kashmir."

The only television news channel based in Kashmir is the government-controlled Doordarshan Kendra. The local cable news, on the other hand, was banned in 2010. This time, however, even the airing of cable TV entertainment channels has been suspended altogether.

At a time when more than 100 civilians including a 14-year-old schoolgirl Insha, have lost their vision, Mehbooba has turned blind. Unlike pellet gun victims who are suffering excesses by security forces, the J&K CM seems to have been blinded by power, bestowed upon her by ally Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP).

Having failed to overcome the biggest-ever humanitarian crisis, which emerged in the aftermath of killing of militant Hizbul Mujahideen "commander" Burhan Muzaffar Wani on July 8, she has been at the helm of every hit-and-miss decision.

In one such endeavour, the government announced helpline numbers for sufferers at a time phone connectivity remains suspended.

Such orders are often hatched from her picturesque Fairview (read Fear View) villa, from where she largely rules the curfewed Valley.

One wonders what her advisors like noted intellectual Amitabh Mattoo are doing.

Add to this the chronic silence of government spokesman and Cabinet minister Naeem Akhter, who is unwilling to respond to media queries, which would pertain entirely to the deepening humanitarian crisis.

The Modi government, on the other hand, is looking at sending Imams to the restive Valley, as if Kashmir is a spiritual dispute, which clerics can heal through Islamic-praying.

As snapping of internet and cable connectivity has failed to restore law and order in curfewed Kashmir, the government may soon consider a ban on oxygen. And that may just fetch results, it is feared.

Since the day the government ordered the clamp down, journalists in the Valley have been facing a tough time; stuck between the devil and the deep sea.

In the absence of curfew passes and suspended phone connectivity, our movement is vulnerable to execution of shoot-at-sight orders by trigger-friendly forces, while some in the stone-wielding mobs are equally unhappy with our "biased reporting, which pleases India." They want us lapidated by their kangaroo courts.

Amid multiple restrictions, we struggle to file the Kashmir narrative, craving for contact with those whose phones and internet lines are dead. It will certainly take time to rediscover pigeons as a means of communication.

Having failed, Mehbooba is brutally cementing every humanitarian space meant for genuine voices of concern, if not necessarily dissent.